Well I found some plates

Posted on September 11, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

A few years back, when I was at CSM, the canteen was having a clear-out and I came across these plastic plates.

We used them in our greenhouse, back in London, to put plant pots on. But always in the back of my mind I thought they might be useful for something hobby related.
Over here now and getting settled. Time to start unpacking boxes and I came across them. Tick tick tick, hmmmm?

I laser-cut a base and some gubbins to make it a bit more interesting but I seem to have missed out photographing the base painting and the chipping.

Here we are masking the structure to add a white stripe.

Masking the whole structure to avoid overspray.

As you can see my airbrushing was not very successful. Instead of gently building up the layers I blasted away with the end result being this where the paint went under the masking.

This was remedied by adding a line of marker pen.

Adding rust streaks with oil paint.

The finished product. I wanted to provide a quick photo as I’m certain it is going to feature in more photos in the future.
If I can point you in the direction of this blog
http://port-imperiale.blogspot.co.at/
It’s Blogs like this that keep me on my toes.
Now that reminds me…. I’ve got some small flowerpots I picked up at Ikea because they had some plastic grass in them.

Rogue Trader Civilians

Posted on September 6, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

I wanted some civilians for my future games of Rogue Trader/Rogue Stars so it’s not just two groups of fighters slugging it out. I’m now trying to figure out some form of group dynamic. Maybe three or four influencers to roll direction/scatter dice for and everyone else following them. This might make life interesting for the fighters if they have a crowd charging towards them in the middle of a firefight.

The Patron, his Concubine, his Bodyguard and his Accountant. These are from Moonraker Miniatures

Colony 87 from their Kickstarter

rtciv3

Citadel Paranoia ‘bots and a certain melancholic android from Denizen Miniatures

Speeder Bike from Denizen, scratch-built easel and Painter Kevin from Foundry

Slave Market. Minions, not sure about them I got them in the 80’s. Naked girl and man with staff from Unfeasibly Miniatures. Kneeling girl from Brother Vinni. Bodyguard from Warlord Games.

These were from some freebie figures I got at Salute. Maelstroms Edge with bits from Warlord Games, Victoria Miniatures and Perry Miniatures.

A Fatty from Citadel’s Judge Dredd. Privateer Press and Ramshackle Games.

A Cartographer from Ral Partha Europe. Traders from Lead Adventures and a Gentleman from the Slaver set from Unfeasibly Miniatures.

Moonraker and Reaper

Reluctant to be photographed, Meridian Miniatures and Moonraker in the center.

Denizen

Denizen

My target is for about fifty. Getting them painted would be good.

And yes, I am prevaricating about the Dragon.

grumpyoldtin now on Etsy

Posted on September 6, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

I’ve now taken the leap to Etsy. The first steps to untold wealth?

It’s rather pleasant here Mavis, don’t you think?

Posted on August 26, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

Just one minor adjustment, just extending a cut line by two millimetres, and it’s ready to roll. I already have an order for three, so not too shabby.

Another brick (or stone) in the wall

Posted on August 26, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

Today has been hotter than yesterday, if that is possible. The cicadas are in full voice and the mountains are a pearly grey in the heat.
This mornings task was to glue some walls together that I had laser cut over the last few weeks using up old scraps of MDF.

These were inspired by one of GDubs scenery books where they made walls from thick card. I really did not fancy spending hours and hours with a knife cutting out card shapes. This is where a laser cutter comes in handy. Each wall section only takes a couple of minutes to cut and I have loads of scrap that I want to use up. The only pain is glueing it together.

By ten this morning I had to stop as the glue was setting almost immediately in the rising heat.

Pinning for the fjords

Posted on August 25, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

I have been prevaricating around the bush about the Dragon. Mainly because I am nervous as it is the biggest model that I will have attempted. I do have bigger in the lead mountain, a Forgeworld Titan, but that model really does put the wind up me. Maybe next year?
I have been doing other things, work avoidance really, glueing together all the laser cut bits that that I have made for my scenery over the year and various DIY and painting jobs around the house.
The Wife and Kids have gone to Croatia for a week so I have the whole place to myself. This is good, the dining room table has been commandeered and all my loose ends from various corners have been spread out and collated. This has tidied up my work areas and reduced clutter.
The weather is far too good to be sat inside painting. So I am sat looking at the hazy mountains all blue in the distance and soaking up the sun. I have set some thermometers to tell me how hot it is. One is telling me it is 57 degrees. Another says 41.4 degrees, it also says it’s raining. And an older more traditional thermometer says 45 degrees. So it’s quite warm.

Luckily drilling holes for pinning is something that can be done outdoors. I am using paper-clips for the pinning because although the Dragon is resin it’s still pretty hefty and I’m not sure if my usual thin brass wire will be up to the job.
For some strange reason I’ve got it into my mind that this Dragon is Norwegian. But it won’t be blue.

Clear the decks! The dragon is coming!

Posted on August 11, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

I haven’t painted for four months.
There has been the Puppet’s War Robot sat on my desk half done for all this time and I think I have been using it as an excuse. So I have packed it away and cleaned the desk away of any other distractions.

Tidy desk

So the next project is the dragon.

Image copyright Heresy and is used totally without permission.

Here is the post I’d written before, for the benefit of my newer followers.
https://grumpyoldtin.wordpress.com/2015/05/21/jobs-a-good-un/
This project has also be an excuse to crack on with my workshop where I plan to airbrush and do some of the dirtier jobs.

Workbench

I’m going to have a permanent airbrush set-up as before I had been packing it away after every use which I found that it put me off using it.
Part of my equipment is a single action airbrush which was being used for primer and for varnishing. I wanted a double action but the expense put me off. I use Facebook, probably too much, and one of the groups I subscribe to is the “Artblock Social” for people who went to Camborne Tech in the 80’s. The good old days before computers when there was Letraset, Cow-Gum, Type Scales, Grant Projectors, Magic Markers and of course Airbrushes. Anyway, earlier this year was a chat about Type Scales, how totally useless they are these days and why do we still have them lurking in the bottom of our drawers. So this got me thinking, and I posted that if any of the Technical Illustrators had an old one kicking about I’d gladly take it off their hands. I got a message back from one of the guys that he used to be a demonstrator and had a spare airbrush in his garage. He sent it to me and I was half expecting something quite well worn, not that I wouldn’t be grateful. When I opened the parcel I had quite a surprise, a brand new boxed DeVilbiss Aerograph Sprite!
On to the Dragon. I’d met Andy Foster from Heresy earlier this year at Salute and I had promised that this year I would be painting it. It appears that most of the dragons are boxed up on a shelf somewhere.
The next question was what colour? Red? Or green? These are your two classic colour schemes which most painters seem to follow. I was undecided. That was until last week when I had a trip to the zoo with my Boys.
Then I came across this and had my mind made up.

This is a Caiman crocodile and I was very taken by the orange and grey markings.
I think another trip to the zoo may be in order.

“Do you really think that’s wise, sir?”

Posted on August 3, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

First of all a warm welcome to my new followers. Although I have to say I am not quite sure what some of you stand to gain from following a rather niche blog. But it is gratifying all the same.
So without further ado here is some more waffle.
Next up in the sketch modelling is the first in some sci-fi buildings. This is a small habitation.
Here is a side view with Sergeant Wilson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_Wilson) for scale. The exterior is going to have lots of gubbins like solar panels and heat exchangers. I think I might make the top of the roof flat so it can be used as another surface in skirmish games.

This is a front view looking into the car/buggy port. There will be a step/s leading up to the entrance.

A rear view shot. I’m not sure whether to recess this a little and have a little porch area.

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Summertime

Posted on August 1, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

This is a follow on from the prototype in the last post. There are some minor adjustments to be made, but I’m just about there. I did misunderestimate the amount of roof tiles needed. The cut time is approaching an hour which is going to bump the price up, even at minimum wage.

Summertime blues, there ain’t no cure

Posted on July 23, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

For the last four months I’ve seemed to have hit a bit of a painting block.
This is not to say that I’ve not been busy, but I just can’t seem to be able to pick up a brush.

This is a prototype of a generic fantasy building I’m working on. The next step is to make the artwork for the wooden timbers.

This is a sketch model of a building I want to make. Thank heavens for pizza boxes, they’re great for chopping up and playing around with. After this I need to start playing around with some sci-fi buildings.

Getting the picture Part Deux

Posted on July 13, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

Still tinkering with my set-up so I decided to add a top light.

I used my beloved Anglepoise which had a daylight bulb. Correcting the colours was an absolute nightmare, daylight fighting against tungsten.

So I tried with another light, this one also had tungsten light. This was a much better option as the correction factors were the same in Photoshop as before.

My next step is to try manual focus, the autofocus is concentrating on the closest part and with a narrow depth of field it leaves the rear part of the model blurry.

Electric Love Festival, Salzburg 2016

Posted on July 13, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

This is a picture heavy post and totally off topic, so feel free to disregard.
I spent six days working at the Electric Love Festival as a runner for logistics. This was right on my doorstep, literally.
Google Earth
Latitude 47°50’24.51″N
Longitude 13° 9’20.56″E
Zoom out and directly South you’ll see the Salzburg Ring racetrack. This was where it was at.
I have to say that I hit a wall after six days of over 35 degree temperatures and eleven/twelve hour shifts. I was thirty years older than most of the guys I was working with, but I think I managed to hold my own. The music seemed to be the same as what I was listening to twenty odd years ago and I was disappointed that there were no live-acts only DJs. But it was an experience and the money will be useful.
Anyway for your consideration are some impressions of my time there.

This was most impressive stage, a vast ape.

The crew food was a bit hit-and-miss. Somedays delicious, others execrable.

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Getting the picture

Posted on July 11, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

This is a topic I’ve been having some problems with. Now things are starting to settle down a little with the house I thought it was time to get a little consistency with my model pictures.
There are a couple of blogs that I occasionally look at where their models are photographed with a scenic base and background and I quite liked it.
So here is my take on it.

The base was a square of polystyrene with some blue foam details. This was then coated in PVA glue and coarse sand added for texture. This was painted with some dark brown household emulsion paint.

Then it was drybrushed with two more colours of emulsion.

Then flocked.

I went a little low-tech with the sky backdrop. I used a diffuser tube, a kind of crude airbrush, figuring that the coarse splatter wouldn’t be seen.

On the reverse side of the sky backdrop I made a chaotic mix of colours. My main problem was that the card was not dimensionally stable and warped like mad. So I had to dry it like this.

Here is my set up. My camera is a Pentax istD. I went down the Pentax route as I have a large number of Pentax lenses from my time as a photographer in the Eighties. The soft-box and lights are from an eBenk WSB-342 studio kit that I bought for this purpose. The one thing I have done is to change the bulbs to LEDs as they don’t run as hot and don’t use as much electricity.

Here is the first attempt. The lights give a yellow cast, I haven’t as yet managed to source daylight bulbs, the white balance in camera is set to “Tungsten” and but a bit of tinkering in Photoshop (minimal, one slide of the colour balance) solves this.

Some trees in the background.

Now the chaotic sky.
So far the problem with this is the depth of field. There is far too much of it.

So I dropped the aperture right down and this is the result. There are some very minor adjustments to be made, but I think I’m pretty close.
Now to write down what I have done so I can continue to be consistent.
The model used for photography is from Ramshackle Games.
http://shop.ramshacklegames.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=20&products_id=255

Help in the workshop

Posted on June 21, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

I have a couple of new helpers in the workshop today.
help Fluffy and Max

Tools

Posted on June 19, 2016 by grumpyoldtin

Really I should be writing about the last battle I had with Number 1 Son or showing you progress on the latest project. But I’ll do that another day, I am suffering at the moment from a surfeit of schnapps consumed last night at the village Solstice fire.

fire1
tools2
I’ve now got a computer set up in the workshop. So now I can play music and I have installed Illustrator so I can make artwork for laser-cutting. It is very slow but I mustn’t grumble as it was donated to me. Why a PC? Well the laser cutter I am planning on getting only runs on PC and I didn’t want to take the family computer, Apple, downstairs.
Whilst unpacking boxes getting the workshop set up I cam across a few rusty tools that had belonged to my Father and Grandfather. Nothing wildly exciting, some center-punches and a rather nice pin-vice.
tools4 So they got an overnight soak in vinegar and then this morning a scrub with a wire brush and some wire-wool. I remembered that I had my Dremel set up in the hobby room, where I do my painting, so used that with a wire brush attachment to get into all the little cracks and crevices.
tools1 Here they are all cleaned and with a light coating of turtle-wax.
tools3 This is the pin-vice. I’ve added a wooden ball on top and I think I’ll make this my number 1 tool and shuffle the other pin-vice to back-up status.
I am starting to enjoy the fact that there is less and less Tetris involved when I am trying to get jobs done and the tools I require are right to hand.
The final job for the workshop is to get a L-shaped bench made which will be my station for airbrushing, glass-work and scratch-building.